1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus performing an image-related process, and a computer-readable storage medium for a computer program.
2. Description of the Related Art
User authentication is widely used in many circumstances due to the recent increase in awareness of security. In an office environment, section authentication (section management) is used in combination with user authentication for the purpose of budget control for each group or each section.
In the case, however, of the combined use of the user authentication and the section authentication in an image forming apparatus, a user needs to be successfully authenticated twice until he/she is permitted to log onto the image forming apparatus, which increases the time for him/her to operate the image forming apparatus.
There is a function, for example, of incorporating, into authentication information on a user (user authentication information), information on a division to which the user belongs (section information) to perform section authentication in combination with user authentication. In order to use the function, operation for registering the section information in the user authentication information is necessary. In general, an administrator carries out such operation. If a user performs such operation by himself/herself, he/she needs to perform such operation on a registration screen. Unfortunately, it is burdensome for the administrator or the user to perform the operation for registering the section information in the user authentication information.
To cope with this, a cooperative function is provided. According to this function, a user is associated (correlated) with a division in advance. Then, if the user is successfully authenticated by user authentication, then he/she is permitted to log onto an image forming apparatus through the division correlated with him/her. In the case of using the cooperative function, it is unnecessary for the administrator to operate user authentication information for individual users, and it is possible for the user to log onto the image forming apparatus through the division merely by user authentication.
There is proposed a method used in an image forming apparatus configured to register therein divisions to which individual users belong, and to perform user authentication in conjunction with section authentication. According to the method, if a user whose division is not registered in the image forming apparatus attempts to log thereonto, and is successfully authenticated by user authentication, then his/her division is registered into the image forming apparatus (cooperative registration), and thereafter the image forming apparatus performs section authentication on the user merely by user authentication.
Further, another method is proposed in Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2003-195704. According to the method, individual-specific data, for specifying a user, created by reading a fingerprint or the like is registered in a memory in association with a section number. Upon the use of an image forming apparatus, a comparison is made between the individual-specific data registered in advance and individual-specific data created by reading a fingerprint or the like of a user. In the case where it is determined that the created individual-specific data has been already registered, the image forming apparatus is allowed to be used according to the section number registered in association with the individual-specific data.
In general, however, each user is associated with only one division. Further, in the image forming apparatus having the cooperative function, whether or not the cooperative function is made available is set on the entirety of the image forming apparatus. Accordingly, if at least one of all the users registered in the image forming apparatus is associated with a plurality of divisions, it is necessary to make a setting such that the cooperative function is disabled therein. This makes it impossible for a user who is inherently supposed to use the cooperative function, i.e., such as a user associated with only one division to use the cooperative function, which may cause inconvenience to the user.